Sheila Johnson is an African American self-made billionaire and successful entrepreneur who has achieved many milestones throughout her illustrious career. Her first passion was music, and she played violin with the Chicago Civic Symphony before founding the Young Strings in Action orchestra and a music conservatory in Amman, Jordan.
Johnson then ventured into television and co-founded Black Entertainment Television (BET) with her then-husband, where she served as executive vice president and helped bring Black voices to the mainstream. But sold the company to Viacom in 1999. She later founded Salamander Hotels and Resorts, which opened in 2013 in Middleburg, Virginia, and has expanded the Salamander portfolio to include six properties spanning from Aspen to Anguilla.
“This is the third act of my life and the happiest act of my life,” she says. “I’m having so much fun building a hotel company. I put my guests first. When they walk through the doors of my hotels, I want them to feel the warmth we have invested in our properties—that everyone, no matter their skin color or where they come from, feels welcome. I want [hospitality] to be for everyone.” She told Hospitality Design Magazine
She also founded the Middleburg Film Festival, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year, and launched Family Reunion, a culinary celebration of top chefs of color from around the country. Johnson holds numerous positions as a board member for organizations such as CARE, the VH1 Save the Music Foundation, and the Council on Foreign Relations, and is the Chair of the Board of Governors of Parsons The New School for Design in New York. She was also the first African-American woman to be an owner or partner in three professional sports franchises.
The CEO of Salamander Hotels and Resorts is the first billionaire African-American woman and the first African-American woman to be an owner or partner in three professional sports franchises: the Washington Capitals (NHL), the Washington Wizards (NBA), and the Washington Mystics (WNBA). Johnson is also a Global Ambassador for CARE, a humanitarian organization fighting global poverty, and sits on the boards of VH1’s Save the Music Foundation, Americans for the Arts, the Curry School of Education Foundation at the University of Virginia, and the University of Illinois Foundation.
She is the Chair of the Board of Governors of Parsons The New School for Design in New York and the Ambassador for the Healthy Site Institute, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of Sigma Alpha Iota music fraternity.
In an interview with Daily Beast, she expressed her disappointment with what BET network has become and advises her children to not watch it. “When we started BET, it was going to be the Ebony magazine on television,” She stated. “We had public affairs programming. We had news… I had a show called Teen Summit, we had a large variety of programming, but the problem is that then the video revolution started up… And then something started happening, and I didn’t like it at all.
“And I remember during those days we would sit up and watch these videos and decide which ones were going on and which ones were not. We got a lot of backlash from recording artists…and we had to start showing them. I didn’t like the way women were being portrayed in these videos.”
Johnson was honored as one of the Library of Virginia’s “Virginia Women in History” in 2007 and recognized as an Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Medalist in 2012. She received the Lincoln Medal in 2018 and the Order of Lincoln award, the highest honor bestowed by the State of Illinois, in May 2019. In October 2019, the Women’s Sports Foundation honored Johnson with the Billie Jean King Leadership Award. She was inducted into HD’s Platinum Circle hall of fame in November 2022.
